Top 82 Quotes About Commencement
#1. There is a two-fold solemnity which belongs to the dying hour-it is the winding up of life, and it is the commencement of eternity.
Frederick William Robertson
#2. The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons ... and we all found that hard to believe.
Madeleine Albright
#3. The commencement of coal mining at Parsa Kente is a milestone event in coal mining sector.
Gautam Adani
#4. Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable reply, "at the commencement.
Charles Dickens
#5. The most perfect life develops as a circle, and terminates in its beginning, making it impossible to say, This is the commencement, that the end.
Lew Wallace
#6. How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.
Confucius
#7. Live your fear." Why didn't we teach kids that? Why wasn't that in a graduation speech? Commencement speakers should start telling the truth: "You're going to fuck up, but most of the time, that's all right.
Mara Wilson
#8. President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.'
Conan O'Brien
#9. There is a good reason they call these ceremonies 'commencement exercises'. Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning.
Orrin Hatch
#10. There are times in life when the best part of our life and the worst part seemingly coincide, especially those periods that demark commencement of significant personal transformation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#11. The bow is tactically strong at the commencement of battle, especially battles on a moor, as it is possible to shoot quickly among the spearmen.
Miyamoto Musashi
#12. Commencement addresses are usually garbage. They're for colleges seeking publicity.
Greg Gutfeld
#13. From the very commencement the student should set out to witness the progress and effects of sickness and ought to persevere in the daily observation of disease during the whole period of his studies.
Robert James Graves
#14. In 1986, our commencement speaker was George Schultz, secretary of state, fourth in line to the president. You get me-basic cable's second most popular fake newsman. At this rate, the class of 2021 will be addressed by a zoo parrot in a mortar-board that has been trained to say congratulations.
Stephen Colbert
#15. Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God. What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.
Sri Aurobindo
#17. The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir
Alfred North Whitehead
#18. What kind of a world are we going to leave the next generation? I, at least, want my children to look back and say, "My daddy was being arrested at the White House fence and booed off commencement stages. He was trying."
Chris Hedges
#19. George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, 'As I like to tell the 'C' students, you too can be president.' Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act.
Jimmy Fallon
#20. The year 1826 was remarkable for the commencement of one of those fearful droughts to which we have reason to believe the climate of New South Wales is periodically subject.
Charles Sturt
#21. Look at the commencement of His ministry. In the Beatitudes with which the Sermon on the Mount opens, He speaks: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Andrew Murray
#22. In his 1978 Harvard commencement address, Solzhenitsyn listed a litany of woes facing the West: the loss of courage and will, the addiction to comfort, the abuse of freedom, the capitulation of intellectuals to fashionable ideas, the attitude of appeasement with evil.
Charles W. Colson
#23. Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.
Thomas Thomson
#24. You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#25. Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
Sydney J. Harris
#26. Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.
Tertullian
#27. President Obama and Mitt Romney both gave commencement speeches over the last few days. Obama was like, 'You can be whatever you want to be,' while Romney was like, 'I can be whatever you want me to be.'
Jimmy Fallon
#28. I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it.
Jimmy Cliff
#29. Take for example the commencement address he [James Garfield] delivered at his alma mater Hiram College in the summer of 1880 ... The only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word 'dude'.
Sarah Vowell
#30. It was a myth that's often perpetuated at commencement that holds that only hope and promise lie beyond the halls of academe. Don't worry, be happy. Everything is fine.
Paul Tsongas
#31. Comte de la Fere, Touching Some Events Which Passed in France Toward the End of the Reign of King Louis XIII and the Commencement of the Reign
Alexandre Dumas
#32. I hope this will find you ... enjoying the commencement of a new year with every prospect that can make it a happy one.
James Madison
#33. The commencement of true happiness is the realization that your happiness begins with you.
Ogwo David Emenike
#34. The first time I spoke to a group this large was at my college commencement in 1969.
Hillary Clinton
#35. We have each had a commencement, and each stumbled and tottered on the threshold, and had our teachers scorned, instead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet.
Emily Bronte
#37. Donald Trump had a university. Well, the state attorney general decided that the Donald Trump University was an unlicensed sham. And I thought, you know you're at a bad university when your commencement speaker is Whitey Bulger.
David Letterman
#38. It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement
Jacques Derrida
#39. Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life." (Wellesly High School commencement speech, "You Are Not Special", 6-12)
Teacher David McCullough
#40. If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
[Commencement Address at American University, June 10 1963]
John F. Kennedy
#41. A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.
Paul Tsongas
#42. I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing.
Ken Burns
#43. A WEEK BEFORE commencement, at which Stoner was to receive his doctorate, Archer Sloane offered him a full-time instructorship at the University.
John Edward Williams
#44. The closing period of the fifteenth century witnessed the slow but sure increase of the churches of the Brethren. Although far from being unmolested, they yet enjoyed comparative rest. At the commencement of the sixteenth century their churches numbered two hundred in Bohemia and Moravia.
Ezra Hall Gillett
#45. There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.
David Foster Wallace
#46. The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#47. The whole of that part of Southern Africa which is controlled by racial minorities is experiencing either consistent and regular guerilla activity or is faced with advanced preparation for its commencement.
Joe Slovo
#48. At commencement you wear your square-shaped mortarboards.My hope is that from time to time you will let your minds be bold, and wear sombreros.
Paul A. Freund
#49. A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that "individuality" is the key to success.
Robert Orben
#51. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.
[Stanford University commencement speech, 2005]
Steve Jobs
#52. Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.
Tacitus
#54. Unusual commencement advice: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen
would be it.
Mary Schmich
#56. Innocence is ignorance; ignorance is illusion; and Commencement, while it certainly is a metaphor, is no illusion. Commencement's for the disillusioned, not for the innocent.
John Barth
#57. En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.
Philippa Gregory
#58. Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.
Garry Trudeau
#59. I don't believe complete assimilation is possible, at least not for anyone who has an active, open mind. Every step, every entry into the flows of existence can be seen as a beginning, a commencement of a brand new way of seeing oneself in the world. This is the case for everyone.
Chang-rae Lee
#61. In love it is only the commencement that charms. I am not surprised that we find pleasure in frequently recommencing.
Michel, 14th Prince Of Ligne
#62. It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are notnecessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.
Sallust
#63. Play is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for developing in the child a harmonious and healthy organism, and preparing that organism for the commencement of the work of life.
J.G. Holland
#64. Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting.
Amelia Earhart
#65. Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe.
Lydia Sigourney
#66. If I were asked to give a commencement speech (which I'll never be), I'd say basically: They're all gonna laugh at you. Life is pretty much like Carrie's prom. So ... stay secret.
Mark Leyner
#67. The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
[Keynote Address, University of the Arts, 134th Commencement (Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2012)]
Neil Gaiman
#68. That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth.
[Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]
Blaise Pascal
#69. The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
[Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]
Jean De La Bruyere
#70. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
J.K. Rowling
#71. Axiom: Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom.
Gustave Flaubert
#72. Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do.
Oprah Winfrey
#73. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.
Joss Whedon
#74. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer.
David McCullough Jr.
#75. As far as I can tell, it's just about letting the universe know what you want and then working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.
Jim Carrey
#76. Anybody can have a life. Careers are hard to come by.
Jay Leno
#77. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality,
Jim Carrey
#78. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
J.K. Rowling
#79. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms nearly always shoot themselves in ... the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
David Foster Wallace
#80. Most of us only find our own voice after sounding like a lot of other people
Neil Gaiman
#82. And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.
Neil Gaiman
